My father was a mass of contradictions. He was perhaps the only Jewish person I ever knew who'd lived through the Great Depression and never harbored a single left-wing sentiment. He was a Jewish conservative before anyone knew such an animal existed -- and a staunch anti-Communist in an age when Jewish radicalism had a romantic aura to it. Because...

They're really just stone steps, all 72 of them: five flights of 13 and another with seven steps -- and those last ones are always the toughest on the legs. But throw in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the panoramic view of Center City in the backdrop, along with some background music provided by film composer Bill Conti's "Gonna...

Is there such a thing as Israeli cuisine? After all, Israel is a nation of immigrants -- they came from Eastern Europe, Russia, Yemen, Ethiopia ... from all corners of the world. They arrived in Palestine with their own culinary customs and culture, with cooking pots slung over their shoulders and recipes carried in their memories. But they soon found...

A new book about T.S. Eliot is always an occasion, of one sort or another, depending on who's doing the reading or who's formulating an assessment. Those with purely literary interests want the author of such a study to give them some new critical entry or insight into the life or the poems or both. When it was announced that...

Gefilte fish, chopped liver, even Jewish apple cake, it seems, have made the endangered-species list. Once the bastions of Jewish culture and identity, food historian Dr. Carol Harris Shapiro explained that these staples are being tossed aside for sometimes healthier, often faster and usually more "American" options. Speaking at the National Museum of American Jewish History on Sunday, Shapiro suggested...